Long term unemployed youth - Characteristics and policy responses

As part of Eurofound’s focus on the situation of young people in today’s labour market, this project looked at the issue of long-term unemployed youth in Europe.

The report, published in December 2017, provides a profile of the current youth labour market and describes trends over the past decade. The good news is that in 2016, the decrease of the NEET population was consolidated further. However, youth are still more affected by unemployment and by long-term unemployment than the rest of the population.

Long-term unemployment experiences have a detrimental effect on a young person’s well-being and have scarring effects on their lifelong economic outcomes. In particular, early long-term unemployment has lifelong negative effects on the future earnings prospects of young people and the quality of their future work.

Moreover, long-term unemployment dramatically affects various dimensions of young people's well-being. The longer the spell of unemployment, the more dramatic the effects. Key features maximising the effectiveness of policy intervention against long-term unemployment include:

in-depth assessment of individual needs with a multidimensional policy response,

rebuilding motivation, and

use of alternative and online tools to reach out to this group.

This final report is the result of a combination of in-house and outsourced research.